Lord Graham of Edmonton
Main Page: Lord Graham of Edmonton (Labour - Life peer)Mobile Homes Act 2013
Lord Graham of Edmonton Excerpts
Lord Graham of Edmonton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of progress following the enactment of the Mobile Homes Act 2013.
Lord Graham of Edmonton (Lab)
My Lords, this is a good opportunity to review the situation, and that is the spirit in which I raise the issue. There are lots of things that I could say from experience, and especially from correspondence with the people involved. I do this because in 1983 I was a member on the Mobile Homes Act 1983. As a consequence, for the last 30 years I have been heavily involved. When I look back over 30 years the progress made from the situation then to now is quite remarkable and satisfactory. I do not intend to go over old ground of what has been fought over, achieved, and all the rest of it. However, I want to put down one or two markers.
The Minister, in replying to me on issues that I raised, alluded—not to put words in his mouth—to the fact that for the next three or four years the Government were looking forward to the issue bedding down. If he thought I was asking for action tomorrow he was wrong, but I know that he was saying, “Look, give us time to work out the detail”. All I want to say to the department—members of which I see not 100 miles away from me—and Ministers who have taken an interest is that there is a big job still to be done and I just want to point out one or two aspects of it.
I have here a booklet, Park Homes in Cornwall. I am sure it is familiar to the department and those who work there. What puzzles me is the assumption that because we are very creditworthy and using all the facilities, everybody else is the same. From a source that I have, which I accept completely, in Cornwall only 8% of the people who live on parks have access not just to telephones but computers. I do not have the answer, but the department should look at how it is possible to ensure that not just every authority and park but every resident on a park is given the information that they are entitled to. It is a tall order and I am not too sure how it should be done, but I congratulate Cornwall County Council, which has gone out of its way to ensure that residents on the parks are given all the information they need in order to make progress.
I remind the Committee that there are some villains who own sites. The situation has changed. At one time a park was owned by a man or a woman or a married couple, and that was their life. Their job in life was to make sure that the people who lived there, who they knew were vulnerable and sometimes distressed, were looked after. But now there are people who own 30 or 40 parks. Because they have that muscle and it is a big business, they combine with others, and a handful of people have the park home industry in their hands.
There are one or two instances that I want to bring up. The first is the following local newspaper article:
“The company that owns an Isle of Wight mobile home site has been ordered to pay more than £300,000 after offences committed against residents”—
of course, comment can be made that if that is the situation, that is what I want. I do not want people to have to pay. I want people to recognise that although they do not have a gold mine, they have something that pays well and they should look after it and do what needs to be done.
We all know the situation in Wolverhampton. I have a document here from a good friend, who lives in Wolverhampton. He is the secretary of the PHRAA. He woke up one night to find that the owner had set fire to some oil drums. In effect, he was trying to force him out. He was very quick. He was on to me like a shot. I spoke to the local police and they set up a system whereby they could co-ordinate. One of the problems we have is the number of different people involved. There is the department, which I deeply respect and the people who work in it, but we not only have the people who work there, but we also have politicians. There are residents’ associations, and all sorts of other things. We even have the police.
A few years ago, Detective Inspector Colquhoun, in Bromsgrove, solved the problem. We usually find that if we make a request, most police will argue that disputes on parks are civil matters, not criminal. Yet, Detective Inspector Colquhoun was called out to the park when a gang of eight tried to burn out this person and some others. The gang was caught and taken to court. Eight of them were given a total of 64 years in prison. That must have been a very big case, but the beauty was that under the Proceeds of Crime Act they were also fined hundreds of thousands of pounds because they could not show where their money had come from. Of course, that is very important.
I have one or two cuttings from various places. A caravan site was fined for safety breaches. Many site owners, as part of a quid pro quo, ask for a pitch fee or 10% of the sale, but they do not carry out the basic requirements or ensure that various aspects of their responsibilities are carried out. Many of the residents meekly accept that the law is the law and think that they can do nothing about it. When they raise the matter with the local police or the council, because of pressure from other places, including this place, those organisations say, “Well, it’s easier for us to tolerate a bad situation than to get involved”, and it costs a lot of money to the council or the police.
An article in the Cornish Guardian has the headline: “£11,500 bill for parks’ failings”. One park was found guilty of having,
“street lamps left with broken glass fittings, exposed electrical wiring in a clubhouse and a former swimming pool building being demolished by unqualified staff”.
The article continues:
“An inspection found sections of the roof fallen in, guttering blocked and electrical wiring exposed”.
People are getting away with these things. Frankly, we ought to be man enough to realise that they should not. The Herald ran an article with the headline: “Big fine for unsafe lights, wiring and pool building at caravan park”. I do not want to see headlines like that, because I know that behind them is human misery.
About a month ago, on 2 July, the marvellous organisation fronted by Sonia McColl presented a petition to No. 10 Downing Street, and then came to a meeting in Room No. 10 here, attended by Members of Parliament and others. They were quite clear in their minds that although they had won one or two victories, the biggest victory was the ability of a site owner to stop a sale, and, further, still to demand 10% of any sale. That battle is going on now, and so far, so good. But we need to watch the situation very carefully because many people who live in parks are single, elderly and unwell. I am frightened to raise the issues that they have in order to keep their homes. They have their homes, which they look after. When you look at a magazine or some of the journals, you will see that the products that these people are selling are absolutely fine, except that there are some blemishes.
There are no instant solutions; if there were, if it were possible to do things by the wave of a wand, I know that this Minister, looking after this Committee and others, would do it. But the strategic value of combining forces with other people needs to be recognised. The police, councils, councillors and authorities are all organisations that can make a contribution.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, I ask the noble Lord to conclude his remarks because he has gone significantly over time.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, for providing us with this chance to consider the position of mobile home owners following the enactment of the Private Member’s Bill which I had the honour of taking through your Lordships’ House. I pay tribute to the noble Lord’s many years of tenacious campaigning on behalf of mobile home—or park home—residents. I took on the Mobile Homes Bill entirely because of my admiration for the noble Lord’s tireless work.
I also want to record my appreciation for Peter Aldous MP, who piloted the legislation with great skill through its stages in the other place. In noting the all-party nature of parliamentary backing on this issue, I also thank Annette Brooke MP, joint chair of the relevant APPG, for her persistent support. In addition, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the hard-working civil servants who have handled all these difficult issues over many years with great skill.
There is no doubt that the Mobile Homes Act 2013 has righted some terrible wrongs and is a landmark for the thousands of residents of mobile homes who faced grave injustices from the evil practice of so-called “sale blocking”. When I got involved with these matters and talked to residents in their homes, I was deeply shocked to discover the appalling behaviour of certain site owners. These had acquired the freehold ownership of sites—some of which were previously quite idyllic little rural communities—and set about exploiting, harassing and intimidating residents, making huge fortunes from acquiring their homes at knockdown prices and selling on at huge profits. Not only that, but services on sites were neglected; the service charges—pitch fees—were exorbitant; and peaceful communities of older citizens suddenly became places of fear, insecurity, danger or even violence.
I believe that the Act has been a power for good both in outlawing sale blocking and in introducing licensing arrangements that, with proper opportunity for appeals to the First-tier Tribunal, mean that pitch fees must be reasonable and site owners must manage their sites effectively. It is gratifying to note that, in most cases, site owners are now using the standard forms recommended by the Department for Communities and Local Government for their agreements with residents on pitch fees.
So far so good, but we always knew that the Act could not do everything, and park home residents still face serious challenges. I shall set out four areas for further action by the Government. I hope that they may be addressed not by another Private Member’s Bill, as it is difficult to get time allocated to such Bills, but by primary government legislation—particularly when the next housing Bill is prepared.
First, when the Mobile Homes Act was a Bill, we recognised that it could not cover the separate but related issue of excessive charges by site owners controlling the supply of liquid petroleum gas—LPG, often calor gas—distributed to residents’ homes. We heard of cases where the site owner, holding residents to ransom, charged double the sum he paid to the liquid gas suppliers. Similar problems with piped gas, electricity and water were the subject of an Upper-tier Tribunal case last year. The tribunal has outlawed such profiteering from the supply of those utilities—although the worst site owners still ignore those rulings—but many sites depend on LPG, and exploitation through controlling that source of heating can mean fuel poverty for elderly residents. Action is needed.
Secondly, the Act makes provision for a review of whether a fit and proper person requirement should be introduced to debar the real gangsters and profiteers who have moved in on this lucrative opportunity to exploit older people. Ministers have said that this exercise will not be undertaken until 2017. In the mean time, some sites remain in the ownership of some pretty unsavoury characters. It is surely unwise to allow those who are serving prison sentences, those with criminal records, bankrupts, those who have been found seriously wanting by a First-tier Tribunal and other undesirable speculators to be awarded licences to manage park home sites. Although the Act may have chased out some of those operators, some offenders have remained in control of sites. It is open to the Government of the day at any time to bring forward the necessary statutory instrument that would require site owners to be fit and proper persons. I urge that process to be pursued as soon as possible.
Thirdly, there is the question of holiday homes being used as permanent residences and occupied on virtually the same terms as other mobile homes, but falling outside the important protections of the Mobile Homes Act. Clearly, genuine holiday homes serve an important function and help local economies, but if some so-called holiday homes are in reality permanent retirement homes, with the protections afforded to other park home occupiers being avoided simply by requiring residents to take an annual holiday elsewhere, surely they should be brought within the scope of the 2013 Act. This is unfinished business, which a forthcoming housing Bill needs to address.
Finally, there is the issue of the 10% sales commissions—payments to the site owner when a resident sells. That was the subject of the rally which the noble Lord, Lord Graham, mentioned, when hundreds of park home owners came to Parliament earlier this month. I am familiar with the concept of exit fees—typically of 1% of sales proceeds—paid by outgoing leaseholders in many retirement housing schemes. The Office of Fair Trading, just before its demise, condemned this practice whereby the money raised was not used to improve the housing or top up “sinking” funds, which provide for future major repairs. The OFT opposed exit fees that were not used to keep down monthly service charges but instead simply represented a windfall gain for the freeholder. I suggest that the same approach should be applied to 10% sales commissions required by owners of mobile home sites. If the sales commission is used to enhance conditions on the site—improve roads, plant trees, upgrade electricity supply lines et cetera—then everyone benefits. The value of a park home may be 10% higher where the quality of a site is kept up to good standards. This suggests that the charge could pay for itself. All occupiers then enjoy better facilities and the site owner benefits, too, because his commission is 10% of a higher sum.
Conversely, if the site owner pockets the commission and neglects his duties, and the site deteriorates, he does not justify extracting a substantial commission. Indeed, I am told that there are cases in which the site owner deliberately runs down the conditions on the site in order to put pressure on the mobile home owners to leave so that more sales, more commissions, will flow in. That is a travesty.
Now that local authorities are being resourced—I hope adequately—to ensure that licence-holders are doing what they should, the proposition from campaigners like Tony Turner in Cornwall deserves to be progressed. They want to align the requirement to pay a large commission to the quality and quantity of time and money invested in the site by its owner. Paying for something rather than paying for nothing changes the picture considerably. A change to make 10% commissions conditional on performance requires primary legislation. However, means of implementing a change seem to be in place already. Local councils would have to be satisfied with the condition of the site and its management before allowing commissions to be demanded. That certainly looks like a priority for legislation when the chance arises.
I conclude by underlining the appreciation of all those concerned with the fate of mobile home occupiers for the sterling efforts of legislators, civil servants, campaigners and residents’ associations but, above all, for the life’s work of the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton.